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Paladin
:For a description of the role of paladins within the lore of Warcraft, see Paladin lore. For related articles, see Category:Paladins The Paladin is a hybrid melee fighter and secondary spell caster class. Paladins have the ability to play a variety of different roles, but are best suited for either Tanking and/or Healing. They can cast Auras and Blessings that provide useful buffs for other players while withstanding heavy damage with their plate armor. Paladins are a defensive class designed to outlast their opponents. Paladins also have several Undead specific abilities such as Exorcism, Holy Wrath and Turn Undead which make them very effective when fighting Demon and Undead targets (not including Forsaken players). In PvP the Paladin's most well-known strength is his ability to outlast his opponent(s). With plate armor, their ability to heal themselves and a near-complete invulnerability every few minutes, he's a hard target to take down. They can also do a surprising amount of burst-damage and have good access to stun abilities. They also make great supporting characters, buffing and healing team-mates while being able to survive the enemy's attention. On the downside, most of their abilities are buffs that can be dispelled. Their plate does not help them against spellcasters and their DPS is often lower than that of other classes. They are also quite vulnerable to spells and abilities that shut down a magic school, since all their magic is of the Holy school. The Paladin's greatest strengths in PvE are healing and tanking. The Paladin has some of the most mana-efficient and low-threat healing spells in the game, allowing them to be the main healers of a group. Their healing efficiency makes them great endurance healers, though they are somewhat lacking in the group-healing area (healing several group members at the same time). Paladins also make good tanks. One strength of paladin tanks in raids is that they can become virtually immune to crushing blows with the right talents and skill use. They also excel at tanking multiple mobs at the same time. This is compensated by an somewhat lower durability compared to warrior tanks. The Paladin's offensive abilities are limited as Blizzard has defined the Paladin's role as defensive and supportive. Paladins are still able to do a decent amount of damage, especially when they focus their gear and talent choices accordingly. Races The Paladin class can be played by the following races: Alliance * Dwarves * Humans * Draenei Horde * Blood Elves Blood elf paladins typically belong to the Order of Blood Knights, while human and dwarven paladins are usually Knights of the Silver Hand. Draenei paladins are probably not members of the Silver Hand, although this could change in time. Most of, if not all of them are members of an organization called the Hand of Argus. Weapons and Armor From the start, paladins can wear cloth, leather, or mail armor, and can train to wear plate armor at level 40. They may use a shield. They can summon their own Warhorse at level 40 (which they can obtain for 90 silver from a trainer), which can be quested to an epic Charger at level 60. They can use the following melee weapons (either innately or via a Weapon master trainer): *swords, one- and two-handed *maces, one- and two-handed *axes, one- and two-handed *polearms (at level 20) Paladins can't use ranged weapons Paladins cannot dual wield or use any conventional ranged weapons. For ranged damage, a paladin has several limited options: *taking the Engineering profession in order to obtain limited ranged capabilities such as dynamite, bombs, and trinkets. *:one notable option for a paladin who specializes in Gnomish Engineering is the Gnomish Death Ray, since a paladin's invulnerability shield prevents the player from taking the damage normally associated with using this item. (Note: Blizzard has mentioned that this will no longer work in past patch notes, although it has not been changed yet. Actually, they noted that while in blessing of protection if the trinket fails and backfires, you will still take damage, however you do not take damage while casting it, and nothing official has been stated on this topic.) *a ranged trinket such as ; it has a 3 minute cooldown, or . *non-engineering explosives such as EZ-Thro Dynamite or EZ-Thro Dynamite II *using Judgement in combination with a seal (see below) allows for a limited range attack similar to (but more limited than) a druid's Moonfire *spending talent points in the Holy tree to acquire the spell Holy Shock *spending talent points in the Protection tree to acquire Avenger's Shield *using Hammer of Wrath on an enemy with less than 20% of their health left *Blood Elf paladins can also use their racial ability, Mana Tap, to have some limited pulling of mana-based mobs You may be interested in a compendium of the best Paladin's weapons. ;See also: :Formula:Mana regen & Shields Auras In addition to spell buffs, a Paladin can also boost their group's abilities through the use of Auras. Multiple paladins can use different Auras within a group (although two Paladins using the same Aura gain no additional effect). The different Auras are as follows: * Devotion Aura: Gives additional 55/160/275/390/505/620/735/861 armor to nearby party members. (type: Protection; first acquired at level 2; 8 ranks) Armor bonus can be increased via talents * Retribution Aura: Causes 5/8/12/16/20/26 holy damage to any creature that strikes a party member. (type: Retribution; first acquired at level 16; 6 ranks) Holy damage can be increased via talents * Concentration Aura: Gives 35% chance of ignoring spell casting delays caused by damage to nearby party members. (type: Protection; first acquired at level 22; 1 rank) Chance of ignoring spell casting delays can be increased via talents * Sanctity Aura: Increases Holy damage done by party members within 30 yards by 10%. This is gained through a talent. (type: Retribution; Obtained at the Retribution Talent Tree; 1 rank) Additional effect of 1%/2% bonus to damage done by party members may be obtained through a supplemental talent * Shadow Resistance Aura: Increases the group's shadow resistance to 30/45/60/70. (type: Protection; first acquired at level 28; 4 ranks) * Frost Resistance Aura: Increases the group's frost resistance to 30/45/60/70. (type: Protection; first acquired at level 32; 4 ranks) * Fire Resistance Aura: Increases the group's fire resistance to 30/45/60/70. (type: Protection; first acquired at level 36; 4 ranks) * Crusader Aura: Increases the mounted speed by 20% for all party members within 30 yards; does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects (type: Retribution; first acquired at level 62; 1 rank) For more details, Auras are at the top of this Thottbot's Paladin skills chart. Blessings Blessings are spell buffs that can be used on the paladin or other characters. Most can be cast on any friendly but some are limited to the paladin's party. Blessings last 5 minutes unless noted. The different Blessings are as follows: * Blessing of Might increases melee attack power by 25/35/55/85/115/155/185/220 (type: Retribution; first acquired at level 4; 8 ranks) attack power can be increased via talents * Blessing of Protection grants immunity to physical damage for 6/8/10 seconds (party member only) (type: Protection; first acquired at level 10; 3 ranks) cooldown can be reduced via talents * Blessing of Wisdom grants 10/15/20/25/30/33/41 mana each 5 seconds (type: Holy; first acquired at level 14; 7 ranks) mana gain can be increased via talents * Blessing of Freedom grants immunity to movement impairing effects for 10 seconds and frees target from said effects (type: Protection; first acquired at level 18; 1 rank) duration can be increased via talents * Blessing of Salvation grants a 30% reduction in threat generation (type: Protection; first acquired at level 26; 1 rank) * Blessing of Sanctuary reduces damage taken from all sources by 10/14/19/24/80 and inflicts 14/21/28/35/46 holy damage to the attacker if the attack is blocked by a shield (type: Protection; first acquired at level 21; 5 ranks) This is gained through a talent. * Blessing of Light increased heal made by Holy Light by 210/300/400/580 and Flash of Light by 60/85/115/185 (type: Holy; first acquired at level 40; 4 ranks) * Blessing of Sacrifice transfers 45/55/81/104 damage per hit taken to paladin for 30 seconds (party member only) (type: Protection; first acquired at level 46; 4 ranks) * Blessing of Kings grants +10% to all attributes (type: Protection; first acquired at level 20; 1 rank) This is gained through a talent. See Blessings at Thottbot for a complete list of available Blessings and their effects. Greater Blessings Introduced in patch 1.9, Greater Blessings are longer-lasting, easier to buff versions of normal blessings. Greater blessings last for 15 minutes and will buff members of the group of the same class as your target. Requires 1 Symbol of Kings per each blessing cast and requires the highest rank of corresponding normal blessing in order to be trained. Seals Seals are short-term self-buffs which boost the Paladin's power temporarily. Effectively, they add a weapon proc to their melee strikes. Additionally, Paladins can unleash these seals upon an enemy. Each type of seal will have a different effect when unleashed. The Seals provide the following buffs to the Paladin: Seal of Vengeance is available only to Alliance paladins; Seal of Blood is available only to Blood Knights. See Thotbott for a list of Seal effects at each level. See the Paladin DPS Calculator to see what Seal produces the best results given your gear. Other Abilities Aside from Auras, blessings and seals, paladins have a few other spells that complete the class' arsenal. * Redemption: Redemption is the paladin resurrection-like ability that will restore a player character from their corpse with partial health and mana. The spell cannot be cast in combat and is interrupted when attacked. (First acquired at level 12; 4 ranks; type: Holy) * Righteous Fury: Buffs the caster, increasing threat caused by holy damage by 60%. (First acquired at level 16; 1 rank; type: Protection) This spell increases threat generation, and also allows the paladin to reduce damage taken by a percentage when improved by a talent * Divine Protection/Divine Shield: The Paladin becomes immune to all attacks for a few seconds. (First acquired at level 6; 4 ranks; type: Protection. Name changes from protection to shield at level 34. Divine Shield allows you continue attacking while shielded at 50% attack speed.) Divine Shield's attack speed reduction may be removed down to 0%, as well as increasing the paladin's stamina by a given percent via talent * Divine Intervention: Sacrifices the Paladin to remove the selected friendly target from combat for 3 minutes being immune to all damage. The Paladin does not take any durability loss. (first acquired at level 30; 1 ranks; type: Protection) * Righteous Defense: Come to the defense of a friendly target, commanding up to 3 enemies attacking the target to attack the Paladin instead. (first acquired at level 14; 1 ranks; type: Protection) * Spiritual Attunement: A passive ability that gives the Paladin mana when healed by other friendly targets. The amount of mana gained is equal to 8% of the amount healed. (first acquired at level 18; 2 ranks; type: Protection) * Lay On Hands: Sacrifices all of the Paladin's mana to heal your target of an amount equal to your maximum HP. Restores mana as well at higher ranks. (first acquired at level 10; 3 ranks; type: Holy) Cooldown can be reduced, as well as an increase of armor with a given percentage via talents and/or via a bonus when you wear 4 pieces of T3 * Hammer of Wrath: Hurls a hammer at the target enemy, causing high(holy) damage. Only usable on targets lower than 20% HP. Works like an Execute for a Paladin, and usually seeing this being cast at you means you've lost the fight. If the target goes above 20% HP when this is being cast, the spell cancels. (first acquired at level 44; 3 ranks; type: Holy, physical) Paladin Tips thumb|Paladin in full Judgement set. #People will expect you to heal if you don't have a priest or druid in your party. After all, you will be the only class that can heal. (Non-resto shaman do not have the healing viability that non-holy paladins have.) If you are unwilling to heal in such a case, bow out. #When buffing start by buffing yourself and then the rest of the party, that way you will know that when your blessing runs out it's time to buff everyone again. #In instances, give casters Blessing of Salvation, unless they explicitly request something else. It saves them from attracting aggro which could cause a wipe. #Flash of Light is mana efficient. Holy Light is time efficient (despite the 2.5 second cast) when considering it heals four times the amount of Flash of Light. While Flash of Light may constitute the majority of your heals, Holy Light is frequently a necessity such as on a tank during a boss fight, or to heal anyone who is being attacked in PvP. #If there are two or more paladins in your group, decide on who will do what auras. Consider that Improved Concentration Aura reduces the duration of counterspells and of other silence effects. # Three paladins should suffice for raids of any size (for blessing purposes), assuming that two of the blessings are castable by two of the paladins. In groups (raid or not) with more than one paladin, consider this buffing scheme: ## Blessing of Sanctuary on tanks; Blessing of Might on melee dps; Blessing of Wisdom on casters ## Blessing of Light on tanks; Blessing of Salvation on dps and any casters ## Blessing of Kings on everyone #Do not cast Blessing of Protection on a tank unless there is another tank ready to pick up the aggro that the first tank drops. Blessing of Protection and Divine Shield drop all aggro to 0 from the recipient of the bubble for the duration. However, the threat value will return when the bubble goes away (from user cancellation or the duration was finished). But with Blessing of Freedom, you cannot make any melee attacks through the bubble, which is the only way a warrior can develop aggro; and for a paladin tank, we need the enemy attacking us to develop aggro. You can still cast through Blessing of Freedom however, so it is acceptable to cast it on AoE casters. Paladin's primary stats This is a list of the paladin's primary stats, not necessarily in order of importance; that is left up to the player based upon his goal and play style. It is worth noting that you should not strive for standard melee stats (attack power, melee crit rate, etc.) for any build but a retribution build. For tanking, you do need spell damage, but for most purposes it should be enough to simply have a spell-damage weapon, such as Continuum Blade or some other similar weapon. Assuming you have no other spell-damage gear, weapons that grant defense rating may not permit you to get and hold enough aggro, rendering useless all your defense skill value and your talent build. Talents Paladin Talents are split into 3 categories: * Holy * Protection * Retribution Talent builders can be found at: * Official Blizzard site * WorldofWar.se * WoW Vault * ThottBot * Merciless * Wowhead Some good info at the official WoW forums: End-Game Expectations Paladin]] Raiding A Paladin is valued in raids for the buffs they bring, their ability to cleanse, and almost always used as a healer. Paladin healing is valued in that it is very mana efficient, if not the most powerful; the quick, smaller, low-threat heal of Flash of Light filling a niche in healing. Utility from judgements is also valued, albeit somewhat situationally. Tanking is made more viable by increased aggro and mitigation talents, the introduction of Spiritual Attunement for longevity, Consecration made trainable and a taunt in the form of Righteous Defense. The Paladin is now almost as good (if not on par depending on gear) as a Warrior at main tanking and the best multi-mob tank, as a great deal of their threat is based on reflective and AoE damage. Changes to the Retribution tree, primarily Sanctified Crusader and Crusader Strike, have increased the value of at least one Paladin per raid spec'ing deep into the tree, with increased utility and damage, and Netherea recently revealed that with an upcoming patch, Retribution Paladins would be recieving a buff to their raid viability. Healing The Holy tree has been vastly improved with the introduction of the 41 point talent trees. The three key talents for any serious PvP healer are Light's Grace, Blessed Life, and Holy Guidance. This allows you to last much longer than before while saturating your surrounding allies with heals. Light's Grace allows you to quick-fire Holy Light heals for larger burst healing effectiveness. Blessed Life will mitigate 10% of all incoming attacks to 50% of their normal damage. Taking into account that we wear plate and use shields, this is a much aggravating talent to all melee classes that cross our paths. Holy Guidance will increase your overall spell damage and healing based upon your current intellect. Healing in Instances Tanks will almost always get Blessing of Light. The only exception of this is the rare occurrence that the Paladin will not be the primary healer, as Blessing of Light only benefits Paladin healing. As an alternative, use Blessing of Kings to increase the tank's health and other stats, or use Blessing of Might for more attack power. Paladins have a huge amount of crit to their Holy Light spells when they spec into the holy tree. Holy paladins have a far better ability to spam rank 4 Holy Light on tanks that have Blessing of Light. Even with the down ranking nerf, this is still the most healing per mana. Holy Light also has around 23% crit depending on gear. The paladin is a combat healer. They spam Flash of Light (FoL), raid/group wide, in an effort to keep their teammates alive. With that in mind, be intelligent about how you heal and what various levels of FoL one can use to get the job done. Healing in PvP The paladin's role as a combat buffer and healer is especially well-suited for battlegrounds. Your short duration buffs are ideal in these situations, as they cost very little mana and their short duration isn't drawback when players are sure to die or get dispelled within 5 minutes. Compared to the costly 30 minute buffs of other classes, the efficiency of the paladin blessings truly shines here. Your toughness makes you an ideal healer as well. Unlike priests, you will often not be the first priority for your opponents as you're too tough to take out quickly. This leaves you more freedom to heal. Be wary though, as some well structured pvp groups will specifically kill ALL healing targets first. Healing in Arenas Paladins face many disadvantages in arenas, mainly due to only having Holy class spells. Even if you have predominantly been Holy spec, putting a few points into Protection wouldn't be a bad idea. There are 2 major problems that face a paladin while in an arena. These are interrupts/silence, and CC. Interrupts/Silence are very nasty to a paladin, especially Counterspell. This ability completely destroys the paladin in both healing and damage. Alleviation to this lies in an aura; With a talent, Concentration Aura, it is possible to ignore all spell interruption effects and reduce the duration of all silencing effects by 30%. It is notable to mention (found in heroic Blood Furnace) that now has a similar effect. Concentration Aura will not stack with abilities that offer similar effects. It is notable because it offers the same protection, without a need to change auras. Crowd Control can be another problem for paladins in arenas. Paladins have the ability to get out of any CC, except Cyclone, and the PvP(See Insignia of the Horde and Insignia of the Alliance trinket, Paladins have an out for every form of CC. Quests Paladins have several class-specific quests which allow the character to learn valuable spells. See the Paladin Quests page for an outline of these quests. See Also *See Starting a Paladin for some advice when starting out. *See How paladins heal for advice on paladin healing. *See the Paladin Category for further information on the Paladin class. *See Paladin Talent Discussion for information on common Paladin Talent Builds. *Higher level Paladins will want to stop by on the following pages: ** Paladin Armor Sets **Paladin Armor Set Comparison *Statistics of paladins from Warcraft II *Also, some good info at the official WoW forums: ** Paladin Guide ** Geld's Paladin Guide ** Tankadin Guide by Gestalt * Divine Magic *Spell Damage Coefficients External links *Paladin Leveling Guide - Helps new Paladins choose their talents at early levels. *Paladin DPS Calculator - Simulates long term paladin DPS based on selected Seal and stats. Still in Beta. Category:Classes Category:Paladins